michigan polls there this month. but for what it's worth, i should also tell you we have national polls. for the national polls mitt romney supporters it's time for the finger vision. president obama up by five points. that's the fox news poll. the gallup dayly tracking poll had been quite close recently. now gallup shows president obama up by six. even really quite ostentatiously republican leaning rasmussen poll gives president obama a one-point advantage nationally. basically across the board in the polls that matter, in the states that matter, the obama campaign is ahead. things could change. we've got the debate starting next week. it's a long way to go, it's politics. anything could happen. right now the obama campaign is solidly and consistently ahead. tactically what that means is the obama campaign has to convert being ahead in people's preferences to actual votes. since they are clearly ahead a good time to get those votes

cast is right now. because thanks to early voting people are casting ballots right now. so this lead that they would in the polls can be turned into actual votes while they're still ahead even if they don't end up being this far ahead by election day. iowa became the first swing state in the nation where voters are actually voting early in person. iowa has these really interesting rules where if you get enough signatures from your area you can ask to have a pop-up polling place. sort of like if food trucks offered voting. obama supporters arranged for a pop-up polling place at the university of iowa today. they had the first lady go to the university of northern iowa. it was not a get out the vote event. rather, it was a much more direct, go vote now event. that had first lady speak, and then they had a university marching band lead people from the audience of the first lady's speech directly to the voting booth. don't you always wish voting was like this?

voting needs more drum majors. more cow bell. more skinny kid in the front wearing a xylophone and playing the keys off it. i want voting to always have this happening. so the obama folks are ahead in the polls and that means they're trying to reach tangible benefit in the form of votes, right this way, right now, follow the marching band to the polls. the romney folks on the other hand, are behind. which means they have a different job to do. they don't want america to go vote right now. if america went and voted right now, nate silver says president obama would win by 138 electoral votes. there are no marching bands leading people to the polls from the romney side right now. that is not what they need. what the romney side needs is that they still have to persuade people that governor romney is the guy they should vote for. at the national level, that means they need to fix whatever has gone so wrong with their campaign message and they need to stop doing whatever it is that has turned so many people off to their candidate. when you ask voters whether they like this mitt romney guy, the answer is a very, very plain

answer. no. his favorable ratings are in the low 40s. almost 10 points lower than the ratings for president obama. lower, even, than the famously unpopular former president george w. bush right now. swing state voters say they do not think that mitt romney cares about the needs and problems of people like them. some of mr. romney's numbers are just shockingly bad. i mean double check. shockingly bad. look at the percentage of swing state voters who say mitt romney's policies will favor the middle class. in florida it's 8%. in ohio it's 9%. in pennsylvania it's 9%. whatever the romney campaign has done to get themselves to this point, whether it's mr. romney's tax returns, or the lack thereof, or getting rich by laying off factory workers or the tape where he says half the country is a bunch of lazy bums and victims who depend on the government and he doesn't care about them. whatever it is that turned their candidate into the 2012 reincarnation of thurston howell except in this reincarnation thurston is mean, whatever it is

that has done that it's just killing him in the polls in every state. if the romney campaign does nothing else they must, must, must make sure that nobody anywhere near mitt romney does that rich guy can't relate to people like me thing again. here's the romney campaign last night. >> both mitt and i have summer places up in new hampshire on lake winnipesaukee. a few summers ago i was traching my grandchildren and children to town to get ice cream and we got into the docks and they were all full, looked around, there was no place to park so we stopped at the dock, they all jumped off and ran up the dock and i realized there was nobody in the boat to help me dock the boat. they just left me out there at sea. so, i finally found a place to park after about 20 minutes and i pulled in, i said who's going to drag the rope and i looked up and there was mitt romney. so he pulled me in, he tied up the boat for me, he rescued me just as he's going to rescue this great country.

>> what america needs. more help parking our yachts. as hotel mogul bill marriott so helpfully explained, toss me the painter line, biff. mitt romney is just the man to help america dock our yachts. seriously the romney campaign has been trying to stop stuff like this, right? they have been trying to turn mitt romney into a relatable guy. at romney events they have started playing that video they made for the rnc but that they bumped from network coverage in favor of the crazy clint eastwood thing. this video about mr. romney and his family. it's very nice. nobody saw it at the convention but they're using it at their events now. right. and they gave "time" magazine that 1968 photo of young mitt romney on a beach in france with his love letter to ann, written in the sand. i mean you can understand why they wouldn't maybe want to highlight that mitt romney spent his draft eligible years writing love letters in france instead of serving in vietnam, but there

is also a human benefit to showing him, right? human. an ounce of handsome, humanized mitt at this point might be worth a pound of questions on how he avoided serving during the war. they are trying. they've even got him talking about health reform in massachusetts again. and conservatives now are so scared of him losing as badly as it looks like him losing that they are not even squawking about it this time the way they did when he talked about romney care just last month. the romney campaign is trying to do some things right. they're trying to make people dislike their candidate less. and then thurston strikes again. >> so he pulled me in, he tied up the boat for me, he rescued me just as he's going to rescue this great country. >> at the national level, fairly or not, voters say they regard mitt romney as somebody who doesn't care about working people. who doesn't care about them. it is a lot for the campaign to overcome. and they have not got much time. even if you ignore, ignore, ignore all the early voting. even if you give yourself a

deadline of 39 more days until the general election, at the national level, they have to work on that. at the local level, the romney campaign still does not have the luxury of just doing what the obama folks are doing now. right, just working on turnout and marching people to the polls. the romney folks still really have to work on messaging locally, as well. they still have to work on persuading people. and the way they have decided to message and try to persuade people locally is in some cases by giving up on messaging that is about mitt romney. or even any big contrast with president obama. they're going small. really small. they're going the size of the tip of a sharpened pencil small. look at this flyer. this is apparently not made up. but if it is and i have been punked i will take it back and apologize. as best we can tell this is real. this is apparently a real romney campaign flyer sent to voters in northern virginia. quote, romney/ryan doing more to fight the spread of lyme disease. this is first posted today by

mother johns. here's another page of the flyer. what can a president do about lyme disease? really now? is mitt romney running for president because of tick-borne illness? really? or is somebody else on the campaign food chain making the decisions about what to campaign on? because it is when the freelancing happens, when people start getting desperate and taking matters into their own hands, that then maybe you get a presidential campaign that's trying to be about tick-borne diseases related to deer. maybe that will work in northern virginia? and sometimes it's your buddy, the other mogul with the yacht singing your yacht parking praises. because who among us has not had this challenge. then sometimes it's exactly what you think it's going to be. >> y'all sound like y'all are senior citizens, right? yeah, we don't want -- you don't want obama. you really don't want obama, because he'll get rid of your medicare. you might as well say good-bye to it. yeah, and i don't know if you've

done any research on obama or not, but he is a muslim. he is -- got a socialistic view on the, you know, economy, the government, the whole nine yards. if he had his way, we'd be a socialistic country. okay. really do. pay attention to fox news. >> a volunteer for the clay county republican party in florida made a series of calls on behalf of her preferred candidate, one of those calls got caught on an answering machine and then it got played on a local radio station wmnf and then it got picked up on gawker and now this is part of the romney campaign messaging, too. just like the yacht thing. the leader of the clay county, florida, republicans, for what it's worth, says the volunteer was off script completely. on making those remarks. yeah, you think? joining us now is chris hayes, host of the msnbc weekend

morning show "up with chris hayes." he's the author of "twilight of the elites." thanks for being here. >> it's great to be here. >> i want to ask you about the obama care decision specifically. so, romney decided to run as the most anti-obama care guy in the whole world for most of the primaries. starting last month he started to shift to say, i'm actually glad to be known as the grandfather of this. this should be -- he's bringing it up unprompted. this is one of the ways i want you to know that i am a compassionate person that i did romney care in my state. conservatives used to be very upset whenever he did that. now they don't mind. is that smart on their part? >> yeah, it is smart on their part. it turns out "a" the bill is not as toxic as it was. >> at the national level. >> at the national level. "b," the underlying principle is popular. which conservatives lost sight of the fact that people like the idea of folks having health insurance. if they get hit by a stroke of bad luck. or they happen to have a bad disease. it was that they didn't like the bill, because the bill played out in this country bad way over 18 months. but people like the principle.

and so, back about six months -- six weeks ago, a spokesperson came out and praised the bill, right, when they were responding to priorities usa ad about the guy who lost his job in the factory and the wife died. she said if he had been in massachusetts he would have health care. and someone from red state everyone went bonkers on the right. someone from red state said what conservatives are doing to the romney campaign is like housebreaking a dog. we are saying, do not do that. and that, to me, is in some ways the story of the romney campaign. all the places they could have had political advantage, when they started to drift towards it, the right said no. don't go there. there's places they had political advantage opening on afghanistan, on housing, on -- on the distribution of the recovery in terms of who's benefiting and who's not. and they couldn't go to any of those places because they had to toe the kind of line that you heard on the answering machine in that phone call. that had basically been what the romney campaign has been. >> so now, though, the right having exerted that kind of

discipline on the romney campaign for all of this time, have they just stopped? because they're so cowed by the prospect of him losing, it's okay, pee wherever you want, dog? >> yes, that's exactly the housebreaking has failed. >> it's over. >> apparently. >> do what you need to do. >> that is what it looks like. i was surprised. i was actually anticipating the same round of reprisals after he told ron allen i'm proud of it. and he was right, he said you want to talk about it, kids have health care in massachusetts. he's right. that's a great thing. >> so the right has to eventually decide if they are going to keep trying to help mitt romney win, or if they are going to say that mitt romney is losing, and it's because he's not conservative enough and we need to start saving people down ticket. at what point do they have to make an ideological versus tactical decision there? because mitt romney is very susceptible to critiques from the right. he always does what they say. >> there's two groups here. the kind of commentating class who i think already want to get there, i was saying last night, they're purchasing an insurance premium. every column they write about

how mitt's doing it wrong is to be able to go back and point at the record and say i saw, i saw. >> i knew -- >> exactly. right. so they're doing that. the big question is where the money starts to flow. particularly the money karl rove controls, the part of the money the national party controls. what you're seeing is real hemorrhaging in the downstate races. you and i were just talking about this. the center races are really surprising to me. you've seen real turnarounds. wisconsin, you know, in virginia. but you know, there's a bunch of places where they're not doing well. and i think you are going to start to see the money flow after the first debate if there's not a big moment in that first debate. if there's not a big turnaround. >> the debate is going to be a very big deal. shall we cover it together? >> that would be great. >> chris hayes, show airs tomorrow morning at 8:00. who's your guest? >> we're going to talk to sherri brown about the economy in ohio and how the economy might be better than we realized. the debate we're having about

the economy is not the debate a lot of people political commentators and critics thought we would be having and we want to dig in to the numbers beneath the headline numbers that might give us a sense of why that's the case. >> "up with chris hayes" tomorrow morning on msnbc. set your different or better yet your alarm clock. if you could use a superpower would it be the ability to fly, the ability to be invisible, the ability to be more powerful than a speeding locomotive? senator scott brown apparently has a superpower. we will explain. next. i even wrote a play about that. my symptoms were a pain in my abdomen and periods that were heavier and longer than usual for me.

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the son of the owner of the new england patriots is right this second, right now, hosting a $75,000 a plate fund-raiser for mitt romney. mr. romney is also doing a reception tonight at the home of the guy who founded reebok. both of those events are tonight in the boston area and all tolled those two events should put $7.5 million more in the pocket s it means when i'm trying to stop of the romney campaign. thinking about politics by watching the patriots game on sunday, the freaking patriots ownership is forcing me to think about mitt romney while i'm trying to watch their stupid game without aaron hernandez, which is really annoying. but r5rd regardless, these boston fund raisers tonight, meaning mitt romney is spending

another night in a state that is not at all a swing state. there's no question he's going to lose his home state by something like 10, 20, maybe even 30 point. but unlike california or utah or texas where mr. romney also spends a lot of time raising pony from really rich people who live in states that don't have any contested races this year, when mr. romney is in massachusetts, it's not a swing state but massachusetts does have a really contested senate race. republican senator scott brown is trying desperately, very desperately, to fend off a challenge from democratic candidate elizabeth warren. i use the word desperate on purpose. after releasing one ad attacking elizabeth warren on the basis of race, after his staffers were caught childishly mocking native americans with the whole tom hawk chop and war whoop thing, after the cherokee nation asked scott brown to apologize for that and he refused to do so, after all that scott brown has put out a second ad just today again attacking elizabeth warren on the basis of race.

the scott brown campaign must have some amazing internal poll numbers showing that a race-based campaign is working wonders for him. because i don't know how else you explain this. it's not a whisper campaign, anonymous flyers on windshields in church parking lots like we used to expect for this sort of thing. this comes straight from the campaign unapologetically. just to be clear as a bell about what the story is. it's not that scott brown has ever disproven or anybody has ever disproven that elizabeth warren has native american ancestry. it's not been disproven. it's not a lie. scott brown's whole beef with her, the whole basis for his u.s. senate campaign against her based on race is that he thinks she doesn't look native american to him. these eyeballs don't lie. >> professor warren claimed that she was a native american, a person of color. and as you can see, she's not. that being said she checked the box. she checked the box claiming she was a native american. and, you know, clearly she's not.

>> look at her. look at her. native american? come on. look at her. one weird side effect for us as a show covering this story all week since scott brown decided to put race at the center of his campaign with that first debate last week, one weird side effect for us is that just about every day now we have been getting contacted by people who watch the show or who have read about this story elsewhere, who are all reacting to senator scott brown the same way. it does not seem to have been a coordinated thing, we can't find any evidence it was coordinated. it certainly wasn't coordinated by us. it just seems to be a lot of people who all are responding like this to scott brown and his magical ability to detect ethnic ancestry on sight with his magic dna goggles. one woman tweeted us this picture of herself and said "that's me. do you think scott brown can tell i'm almost half cree indian just by looking at me? oh, i'm sure he could. yes. just look at you. a woman named nancy sent us this picture of herself saying fyi,

scott brown, i have alabaster skin and at birth red hair with a nod to my irish immigrant a maternal side. look elizabeth warren, i am proud to claim my indian roots. if you're scott brown you can count those rooting using your magic divining rod. this is chris. chris says he would like scott brown to know that even though he has blond hair and blue eyes he's half indian. rick and patty sent this. patty's dad was cherokee. rick asked would scott brown say my wife is not indian? i mean, look at her, right? we got sent about a dozen of these pictures. we do not usually get people sending us pictures of themselves. people send us all sorts of stuff but not usually that. all of these folks unsolicited by us are saying pretty much the same thing. this is me, since scott brown claims an almost magic ability to guess people's ethnic backgrounds on sight and that's why he should be a u.s. senator, let's test that ability. let's test his dna-dar. he's the guy who puts the genie

in genealogy. prove it. when scott brown says he knows elizabeth warren isn't really native american, because he said he could just tell that just by looking at her, that is what he volunteered as a major issue in the campaign in their first debate just last week. their second debate is on this monday. if he doubles down on his race-based campaign. if he still claims he can see a person's heritage, we'll know finally and for sure that somewhere in the back of his celebrated pickup truck, scott brown is hiding a magic race ball. boring. boring. [ jack ] after lauren broke up with me, i went to the citi private pass page and decided to be...not boring. that's how i met marilyn... giada... really good. yes! [ jack ] ...and alicia. ♪ this girl is on fire [ male announcer ] use any citi card to get the benefits of private pass. more concerts, more events, more experiences. [ jack ] hey, who's boring now? [ male announcer ] get more access with the citi card. [ crowd cheering, mouse clicks ]

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last night on this show we had an exclusive report on something being held up in congress you sort of can't believe would be held up in congress. i'll admit to be fired up about this on last night's show but i still find it unbelievable. here's an simple idea. an american soldier gets killed in the war. that soldier's payment gets a payment, dependency and indemnity compensation, we're sorry, your husband, father,

mother or wife was killed. this is essentially a widow's and orphans payment to you from the u.s. government. you'd think this would be one of the less partisan inflicted things we do as the government. right? the payment that we make to surviving spouses and children. from time to time that payment gets adjusted to reflect increases in the cost of living. right? that makes sense. one of the least controversial things you could possibly imagine the united states government agreeing to. well, a bill to adjust that payment for the cost of living was brought to the senate floor last thursday. it was expected to go ahead, no muss, no fuss. who is going to argue with that? but it was blocked by someone in governor romney's party. an unnamed republican senator has put a hold on the cost of living adjustment to the surviving spouse's and children's payment for soldiers killed in the war. the same hold is also affecting the disability payments to soldiers who are wounded in the war.

some republican senator is blocking this. we don't know who. governor romney, here's a place to start. you are now the leader of the republican party. i realize you're having a hard time getting the training wheels off when it comes to nation 58 security. but here's an easy one, should that senator from your own party lift that hold on the cost of living adjustment to the payments to those people who we sort of owe it to? should a republican senator who is holding this up keep that hold in place or drop it? you're the leader of that party. do you have anything to say on this? 24 hours later it turns out governor romney does not have anything to say on this. but since that angry little report on this show last night, i will admit it, i was a little fired up, today whoever the republican senator was who was holding up that payment to veterans and their family, today that senator has decided not to do that anymore. it was not technically a hold, a formal hold, it was the republican side in the senate refusing to give unanimous consent. but today a top republican senate aide told us that now they have found time to get unanimous consent that they

didn't have before. now they have. the office of veterans committee chair patty murray told us in response "it's good to see that at least they say the secret hold has been lifted and that's a testament to veterans learning about these back room games and standing up to demand accountability. we won't know for sure until november when we now have to try this over again. my hope is that they have learned their lesson. the vote on this payment, the vote on the veterans payment will now happen in november after the election. it will be really tight. they've got to pass it quickly in order not to affect those checks. but presumably when they bring that up in november it is going to pass. in the meantime we are all hoarding exclamation points just in case it gets hung up again. [ thunder crashes ]

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in the great swing state of virginia, the latest polling shows republican george allen and democrat tim cain tied in their race for u.s. senate. not virtually tied, actually tied. they both have 44%. and into that incredibly tight race democrats today dropped a new ad hitting republican george allen for his own voting record on women's rights issues. trying to tie him to the anti-abortion record of virginia's republican legislature and governor this year.

see that headline? personhood and ultrasound bills advance in house. george allen was not a member of the virginia house of delegates that advanced those bills this year but democrats apparently think it's a good strategy in campaigning against any republican in virginia to just remind everyone that that's the kind of stuff virginia republicans have been up to lately. personhood rights for fertilized eggs and banning contraception. and banning abortion and forced ultrasounds for ladies. if you look closely at the polling in virginia, you will see that republicans are facing a real problem with women voters. the latest polling in virginia in the presidential race shows president obama up overall in the state by two points. but check out the numbers among women voters in virginia. 18. president obama up by an 18-point margin. and what might be motivating all these virginia women to line up against the republican candidate in this very, very swingy state? well here's an idea. a new suffolk university poll out this week asked about the forced ultrasound law passed by republicans in the legislature in virginia this year, signed into law by the republican governor in the state, bob

mcdonnell. virginia voters opposed that law by 17 points. the anti-abortion crusade that has been undertaken this year by republican-led state government in virginia is not popular in virginia. and now virginia women are prepared to take it out on the presidency, right? they're planning to vote against the republicans' candidate for president in their state by 18 points. and that was the context for a really important move made by virginia's republican attorney general this week, a move that could be important for the presidential race in virginia. this week the attorney general certified a new set of regulations targeted only at abortion clinics in the united states. these rules are not just for oral surgeons or plastic surgery centers, just targeting abortion providers. it's red tape that is specifically designed to make it economically impossible to operate an abortion clinic in virginia. that's what's expected to happen in the state. most of the state's abortion clinics are in danger of being closed once these new rules go

into effect. the state's health board initially voted to exempt existing clinics from the most onerous of the red tape. but bob mcdoneal and ken kuch nellie weighed in and went back and pushed the board to apply the new red tape to close the clinics to all the existing clinics in the state. and a couple of weeks ago the health board did what bob mcdonnell and ken threatened them to do. and now these new rules are expected to cause most of virginia's 20 abortion clinics to close their doors. bob mcdonnell this week denied that the regulations are designed to shut down clinics. he said that the new rules are just going to contribute to the expense of operating an abortion clinic calling it, quote, a cost issue. so technically he wants you to know he's not just shutting down the clinics, he's just making it prohibitively expensive to operate one. same diff, right? and if the clinics shut down because bob mcdonnell made it too expensive to operate in his state, i guess abortion access

wasn't meant to be in virginia. we've seen the same thing in mississippi, the governor there signed a new law, had the same approach. targeting the one remaining single abortion clinic in mississippi for special regulation. here what's he said about that. >> i think it's historic that today you see the first step in a movement i believe to do what we campaigned on, to say we're going to try to end abortion in mississippi. we're going to try to continue to work to try to end abortion in mississippi and this is an historic day to begin that process. >> abortion is legal. you can't ban it. it is a constitutionally protected right in this country. phil bryant and bob mcdonnell, do not have the power to change that. what they and republican lawmakers all over the country do have the power to do is cut off access to abortion. they can't make abortion illegal on paper, they can't strike down roe vs. wade except by electing mitt romney, right? who will then pick supreme court judges who will do that.

but they can't make it so hard to get an abortion that it might as well be illegal. they can make the right to access abortion a right in name only. after republicans won big majorities in 2010, they've enacted restrictions not seen. since roe vs. wade was decided in 1973. and as a result of this new wave of restrictions, we're seeing signs of a return to a reality in america that is looking more and more like the days before roe. "business week" published an interesting story this week out of arizona about a woman who is running a nonprofit program there to help poor women in arizona find ways to access abortions. discusses these new restrictions. you can no longer get an abortion outside tucson or phoenix in arizona. and even then you have to wait 24 hours after a forced ultrasound, which means many women are forced to travel hundreds of miles, and then pay to stay overnight in one of those two cities. pending another new abortion restriction, banning some abortions, one abortion rights advocate says she's making

connections in other states outside arizona where she might have to start sending women who need abortions across state lines. quote, abortion is legal but when you have to travel 300 miles to get to a clinic that provides the services you need you don't really have access. in texas, where women also face a forced ultrasound, followed by a mandatory waiting period if they need an abortion, women are crossing the border into mexico to buy drugs they hope will end their pregnancies from unlicensed pharmacists and unregulated pharmacies. one mexican pharmacist who has been selling a drug over the counter says he's heard of girls hemorrhaging after using that drug saying, quote, i try my best to explain the consequences but there's only so much i can do. another pharmacist saying it sells, that's the problem. but i won't tell them how to take it. i just say, you might have problems later. in texas, in other words, the back alley abortions of the days before roe v. wade are back. they just happen to involve unregulated pharmaceuticals instead of coat hangers. and in arizona women are mobilizing to shuttle patients out of state to get access to

abortion. and in mississippi and virginia, abortion clinics are in danger of shutting down altogether. mississippi only had one left before these targeted regulations. abortion access in this country is on the decline. according to a survey, there are 25% fewer abortion providers in the u.s. than there were 20 years ago. and fewer american counties have abortion providers now than in 19. 3 when roe vs. wade was decided. in wichita, kansas, there has not been an abortion provider since dr. george tiller was assassinated in 2009. this week we learned that a foundation run by one of dr. tiller's former employees has purchased his old clnic and plans to bring abortion services back to wichita, if they can. that new clinic will face not only new restrictions on abortion that have been enacted by republican politicians in kansas and signed into law by governor sam brownback they're also going to be facing pickets and protests and pressure from anti-abortion groups in wichita.

the leaders of those groups are already vowing to shut the clinic down before it has even opened its doors. hold on, there's more ahead. [ female announcer ] ordinary lotions aren't made to treat eczema,

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i think it's historic that today you see the first step in a movement i believe to do what we campaigned on, to say we're going to try to end abortion in

mississippi. we're going to continue to try to work to end abortion in mississippi, and this is an historic day to begin that process. >> mississippi governor phil bryant was not announcing his one-man gubernatorial overturn of roe v. wade just then. he was announcing new targeted red tape aimed at the one and only abortion clinic in his state, which is, after all, the other way of outlawing abortion. joining us is the author of "when abortion was a crime." university of illinois law and history professor leslie regan. professor regan, thank you for being with us tonight. nice to have you here. >> thank you, it's nice to be here. >> do you see the wave of abortion restrictions we've had, particularly over the last couple of years, as a means of undermining what is real about roe v. wade, a way of making something that is supposed to be legal essentially illegal by default? >> yeah, i do. it's amazing to watch the things you've been bringing up that

really show that a movement with the new right and a very active, very conservative republican party can perhaps make abortion a crime in certain areas, in certain states without overturning roe v. wade, and for a long time i think the country, the abortion rights movement has been focused on roe v. wade. and really we should perhaps be thinking about the conditions of abortion and think about, since i've studied that, the conditions of abortion when it was illegal. and much of this is what you were just describing is exactly the way it was before roe. having to travel hundreds of miles into other states, flying into other states and other countries, going to mexico for abortion, which by the way when this group in san francisco was sending people to mexico for abortions, they were sending them to superb providers. they were getting excellent care

and they were actually kind of the model of what the people who were trying to overturn these laws, the illegal -- the laws that made abortion a crime, that was what they wanted was to make it accessible to everyone, available to everybody no matter whether they were wealthy or poor, moe matter who they were, what their age, their race, their religion and they would be able to get safe abortions and where the women were treated with respect and humanity. and this is what the providers in mexico that they were working with, they were considered very humane abortions. they always had this reputation as being a very dangerous and bad place but actually the program that they set up was the opposite. so much of what we're seeing is very similar. but we don't have the good underground yet. >> do you see people who are concerned about the erosion of abortion rights and the way that

access has been winnowed away? it doesn't even feel like winnowed away. seems like it's become hacked up. do you see that moving toward sort of underground railroad style organizing. do you see people essentially trying to pool resources in terms of where the right still is accessible in a legal and safe way, and those becoming sort of hubs for the country, and other women trying to help them and get to those places? >> i think you just showed those examples. and there are abortion funds where people raise money to provide for low-income women who live in states where there's no funding for abortions, there's no insurance since the hyde amendment in 1977. but, you know, they're always on a shoestring. it's very hard to raise the kind of funds that they need for that. and, you know, even if these things are organized and i know there's also people who are

trying to reinvent some of these things and planning to do that if need be but in the 60s even with that they never could reach everybody. they never were able to provide for everybody who needed abortion. even if it was pretty open in the late 60s and all the underground women's lib newspapers and all, not everyone would hear about it. so in chicago where jane was providing abortions, very well known underground feminist organization, there were also women who never knew about it who flew to chicago -- i mean flew to new york or puerto rico and cases of very, very poor black women who couldn't afford an abortion, couldn't raise the money to go to somebody illegal and a provider and did it herself and ended up dying. she lived near but never knew

about it. so this kind of trying to reproduce that is not -- you know, that's not going to provide for everybody who's going to need abortions. >> they should not be seen as glory days. >> no. >> but the fact that people are studying it now tells you about the desperation and worry about protecting this. >> it's extremely worry some. >> university history professor author of "when abortion was a crime" leslie reagan, thank you for joining us tonight. we've got your book and we've be looking at it, and a lot of other people who we talked to reporting on the subject are talking to us about your work on this subject. so you're in the zeitgeist for all the wrong reasons. >> thanks very much. >> thanks. all right. coming up next, throwing a bucket of water on a well respected political reporter for a very important reason. why should saturday night have all the fun?

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okay. yesterday the virginia political guru larry sabado rejiggered his ratings. on a whole bunch of different states and a whole bunch of different races for this election. all of the re-jiggerings were in the democrats' favor. so in the case of the presidential race everything he moved was toward president obama. he had previously rated as a toss-up the states of iowa, nevada, ohio, virginia, and wisconsin. now he says they all lean democratic. he already had leaning democratic the states of michigan and pennsylvania, now his new rating says those don't just lean democratic, they are likely democratic. that's sort of the step by step continuum for these kinds of ratings. you go from toss-up to leaning to likely to solid. and as people readjust their ratings over time, the adjustment is basically always that the race just shifts one column over. from a toss-up to a lean or from a lean to a likely. but in one race, he jumps all the way, he takes an incumbent republican congressman and he

jumps his race from leaning republican all the way over to leaning democrat. he doesn't just give him a squishy shift to a toss-up, he says this guy, who he was essentially predicting to win, he's now predicting to lose. this is a dramatic shift. what is going on here in this race to earn that dramatic shift? >> michael putney with channel 10. >> whoa! we reporters can be unwelcome guests sometimes and today was no exception for our senior political reporter michael putny. michael got splashed with water by the wife of a political candidate who's under investigation by the fbi. >> the woman who threw the water is married to justin lamar sternad, a democrat who ran for congress in the august primary. he came in third place for the right to run against republican david rivera, who now appears to be in a heap of trouble. our now dried out reporter and a very dapper one, michael putny here to explain what this

dousing incident was all about and who exactly is in trouble? >> well, i think we could start with congressman rivera. he certainly is in trouble. as well as justin lamar sternad who we are told now is singing to the top of his lungs to the fbi about how david rivera reportedly financed sternad's campaign. >> i'm sorry to bother you i'm michael putney with channel 10 -- >> and when mrs. sterned opened the door, i got drenched. so as you can see, we are all wet, and justin lamar sternad is not talking, if he is home. his wife threw the water on me. we do know however that mr. sternad is talking to the fbi. and sternad is reportedly saying that congressman david rivera secretly strategized and paid for the democrat's campaign. if true that would be a criminal conspiracy. >> that was veteran south florida political reporter michael putny of the miami tv station wplg.

obviously getting water thrown all over him as he tries to figure out what congressman david rivera is in trouble with the fbi for this, too. i mean congressman david rivera has already been under investigation by the fbi, the irs, the miami dade police department's public corruption un it, the miami dade state attorney's office and the florida department of law enforcement over financial disclosure issues and allegations that' abused the powers of his office. back when he was just a state legislator. now that david rivera has moved up in the world and is a member of congress, now the investigations into frub david rivera are getting way more interesting. something kind of weird happens in south florida when it came time for the democrats to pick somebody in their primary to run against congressman david rivera. there was the candidate who everybody expected who had run hard against mr. rivera in the past. that was this guy, joe garcia. but in addition, there was another candidate in the primary, kind of out of the blue, and that was this guy. who reported almost no fund raising and who personally had

only a little over 100 bucks in the bank. but he still somehow managed to put out really professionally done, professionally microtargeted, high-end, well-researched campaign mailers. lots of different ones to the tune of thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in campaign spending. thousands and thousands of dollars in cash, it turns out. in crisp hundred dollar bills. stuffed into envelopes. where was all that money coming from? here's how the miami herald puts it, during one call congressman david rivera directed an employee to walk outside, check the office mailbox for an envelope containing payment for one mailer. the envelope was stuffed with cash. $7800. the owner of the company doing the mailers then told the herald, i never saw so much cash. the story that's now reportedly being fotold to the fbi is that congressman david rivera used not just $7800 in cash but tens of thousands of dollars in cash to essentially create this fake

democratic candidacy that he really wanted to run against instead of joe garcia. and now the fake candidate, who is cooperating with the fbi, is facing a felony indictment. and his wife is throwing pitchers of water at venerable florida political reporters. and david rivera's seat in congress is jumping all the way from leans republican to leans democrat without a stop at toss-up in the middle. and in the course of all the reporting on this incredibly sordid story from the miami new times and the local miami tv stations and the miami herald, we learn the one detail of this story that will stick forever, no matter what happens in this congressional race and no matter who goes to prison. the alleged conduit between the fake candidate and the congressman who was funding the fake candidate's campaign is a self-described republican political guru and conservative bad girl who is now missing, and who is wanted for questioning in the case. we learned from the miami herald this week that when she talked to the fake candidate guy about who this mysterious benefactor was who was paying for everything in his campaign, he says she never said the words david rivera.

she called him by his initials d.r. or when she wasn't calling him by his initials she called him by his nickname, the gangster. his nickname is the gangster. not a very nice nickname. it should probably be congressman gangster. we will see. but as i said, the david rivera race now leans democratic. weekends with alex witt starts now. what happened in libya? new word from the top u.s. spy office on the killing of the american ambassador there. was it another september 11th al qaeda attack? 38 days and counting. polls show a turn toward the president. how might those numbers affect what happens at the voting booth in november? we'll examine that. not seeing red anymore? one report this morning suggests that an attack on iran by israel may not be as close as once thought. in office politics, the "today" show's